I step into the flow of people walking towards the Ethiopian Orthodox Church set on a rise. On any other day a swarm of trucks and minibuses on this road would be belching out diesel exhaust. On this Sunday only the waft of cooking fires and the acrid street dust kicked up by footsteps hangs in the air. The procession of white head scarves ahead is as a river of whitewater. Marring the peace in the distance is the off-key chanting of the clerics at the church, made worse by the cheap amplifier.
Beggars, mostly old women and disabled men, line the sidewalk leading up to the church. They beg in silence. Draped in gray coarse cloth which functions as both blanket and coat on this cold morning, they sit on the irregular cobblestones with a piece of cardboard in front of them where the generous place small coins. A well-dressed man pulls small loafs of bread from a bag and places one on each piece of cardboard until the bag is empty. Some in their hunger, immediately gnaw on the freshly-baked bread.
I am entrained in the informal procession, an unbeliever among believers. The route leads across a bridge and I glance at the putrid water below. Soap suds gather in eddies, evidence of clothes washed the evening before. Plastic bags by the hundreds create intermittent dams which pool water that provide places to bathe.
We reach the far end of the bridge and begin the last incline, joining others who have taken alternative routes that converge at the church. Now tightly packed together, bumping gently into one another, I am but one drop of water in the flow.
Beggars, mostly old women and disabled men, line the sidewalk leading up to the church. They beg in silence. Draped in gray coarse cloth which functions as both blanket and coat on this cold morning, they sit on the irregular cobblestones with a piece of cardboard in front of them where the generous place small coins. A well-dressed man pulls small loafs of bread from a bag and places one on each piece of cardboard until the bag is empty. Some in their hunger, immediately gnaw on the freshly-baked bread.
I am entrained in the informal procession, an unbeliever among believers. The route leads across a bridge and I glance at the putrid water below. Soap suds gather in eddies, evidence of clothes washed the evening before. Plastic bags by the hundreds create intermittent dams which pool water that provide places to bathe.
We reach the far end of the bridge and begin the last incline, joining others who have taken alternative routes that converge at the church. Now tightly packed together, bumping gently into one another, I am but one drop of water in the flow.
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